Best Thunderbolt Interface?

[Cutlerbri]

I must concur with VRW here. That sounds like a rockin' system. And it can be a "closed" system without an external drive. All your sessions and VIs can live on that 1TB flash internal. Just make sure you backup everything routinely, and do it beyond Time Machine. Have an external HDD, or even a portable SSD. I recently bought a Samsung T5. Amazing little guy. 500 gigs of bus-powered backup. It's the size of a credit card and totally silent.

My big HDD spinners with their fans and AC power cables have met an early retirement.

[Sting]

Originally Posted by VRW

If you don't need the interface primarily on the road where it would be a lot more convenient to have it bus powered, go with the Apollo Twin Mk2 anyway.

Very reliable "sources" have confirmed to me that the Arrow offers the best audio quality by far up to 500 bucks but also that they don't use the exact same
converters like in the Apollos. The Apollos still do sound noticably better.

I have set up a small but professional studio for a friend last summer using an Apollo Twin Solo Mk2 for the audio interface and although I know a lot of the
expensive gear this little box blew me away as for the audio quality.

If you are on a budget stay with the Twin Solo Mk2 for $699.- and optionally add one ore more Thunderbolt satellites later if you will need more DSP power
in the future. The Arrow by the way offers only one DSP as well.

I promise you you won't regret the 300+ for the Twin Solo Mk2 at the end of the day. Another option the Twin does offer are the 8 Adat Inputs which allow you
to expand your system by any external multipreamp channel later. The Arrow does not have any Adat Inputs.

As for Thunderbolt 3 (Arrow) versus Thunderbolt 2 (Twin Mk2) you won't even notice any difference finally. Thunderbolt 2 is super fast/low latency already.
You just will have to get an TB3/USB-C to TB2 converter but as I could see last summer this ain´t any problem at all. Works perfectly fine.

One thing left which caught my attention in your post was that you have 8GB Ram in your iMac only? For PT12 you really want 16GB at the minimum to have
PT working as it is supposed to (disk cache etc.). As you go with a beautiful large 27" i7 Quad iMac you even may consider putting in more like 24GB or 32GB
memory. If this simply will be too much money get not less than 16GB Ram at least for PT12 finally.

Everything else (i7 Quad, 1TB SSD) should be perfect for a nice, current, well working Pro Tools system.

The best of success to you and lots of fun with your cool new studio.

Firstly mate thanks very much for your well informed reply and advice. It’s very much appreciated taking the time to write such a response.

Do you think the solo will have enough DSP power? I will only be using one input at a time for Mic and vocals or guitar as my music is mainly based on rock/pop. My songs normally don’t consist of more than fifteen to twenty tracks. Will be using the included UA preamps, EQs and reverbs going in to put less strain on the computer and will be using the latest version of EZ Drummer for my beats. Would it be better to pay the extra for the Duo, even a second hand unit?

Have been previously using 11R as my interface so expecting an improvement in sound quality for the outlay.

Concerning the 8GB of ram with the iMac. This comes as standard but I’ve been advised not to purchase the extra ram through Apple as I can get it cheaper elsewhere on such sites such as crucial.com so will be upgrading the memory to 16GB for now and to 32GB when I can afford to. The iMac I’m getting has a capacity of 64GB so should be future proof for a while.

Including the Apple Care and interface I’m looking at around £3800 outlay. It’s taken me quite a while to save that but hopefully it will be many years before I need that type of outlay again? I had looked at the new iMac Pro but financially unaffordable to me at nearly five grand for the basic model.

[Sting]

Originally Posted by Cutlerbri

I must concur with VRW here. That sounds like a rockin' system. And it can be a "closed" system without an external drive. All your sessions and VIs can live on that 1TB flash internal. Just make sure you backup everything routinely, and do it beyond Time Machine. Have an external HDD, or even a portable SSD. I recently bought a Samsung T5. Amazing little guy. 500 gigs of bus-powered backup. It's the size of a credit card and totally silent.

My big HDD spinners with their fans and AC power cables have met an early retirement.

Many thanks for the reply and advice. Yes intending to record internally but will invest in a external SSD Drive when I can afford it to back everything up. Have looked at the LaCie https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/...A3P5ROKL5A1OLE

[Drew Mazurek]

Originally Posted by Sting

Do you think the solo will have enough DSP power? I will only be using one input at a time for Mic and vocals or guitar as my music is mainly based on rock/pop. My songs normally don’t consist of more than fifteen to twenty tracks. Will be using the included UA preamps, EQs and reverbs going in to put less strain on the computer and will be using the latest version of EZ Drummer for my beats. Would it be better to pay the extra for the Duo, even a second hand unit?

Def get a Duo if you can. But even a solo has enough DSP to make excellent channel strips for recording. I have one of the new Arrow interfaces (solo DSP) and it can do two Unison pres (610Bs), two Massenburg EQs, and two 1176MKII Rev A's. This is a top notch record chain for sure.

As for mixing with a Solo, you'd have to choose carefully what to use.

This chart would help.

https://help.uaudio.com/hc/en-us/art...Instance-Chart

[Sting]

Originally Posted by Drew Mazurek

Def get a Duo if you can. But even a solo has enough DSP to make excellent channel strips for recording. I have one of the new Arrow interfaces (solo DSP) and it can do two Unison pres (610Bs), two Massenburg EQs, and two 1176MKII Rev A's. This is a top notch record chain for sure.

As for mixing with a Solo, you'd have to choose carefully what to use.

This chart would help.

https://help.uaudio.com/hc/en-us/art...Instance-Chart

Ok mate thanks very much for the help. Can you use that recording chain through the Arrow per track and how do you find vocal quality through the Arrow?

[Cutlerbri]

Originally Posted by Sting

Many thanks for the reply and advice. Yes intending to record internally but will invest in a external SSD Drive when I can afford it to back everything up. Have looked at the LaCie https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/...A3P5ROKL5A1OLE

That La Cie looks nice but you might also check out the Samsung. It's about half the price for the same 500g.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Samsung-Por...dp_ob_title_ce

[Darryl Ramm]

Originally Posted by Sting

Many thanks for the reply and advice. Yes intending to record internally but will invest in a external SSD Drive when I can afford it to back everything up. Have looked at the LaCie https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/...A3P5ROKL5A1OLE

I would be looking for a HDD not an SSD for backup/archive purposed. They are slower but have better power off archive/retention capabilities than an SSD. And it/s not good enough to have one backup drive, you need multiple so you can disperse them to different locations, and so you can handle failures while a backup is occurring (a likely time to find that computer drive is corrupt and you'v e just wrecked the only backup you have by half overwriting stuff...), and so you can manually maintain key point in time recovery capabilities.

[Drew Mazurek]

Originally Posted by Sting

Ok mate thanks very much for the help. Can you use that recording chain through the Arrow per track and how do you find vocal quality through the Arrow?

The box can do two of those chains, one on each mic input. Then once you're done recording you could use the legacy plugs and do a good chunk of your mixing, finishing the rest with native plugs.

Haven't done vocals with it yet, but in initial mic tests it sounds like a Twin.

[Sting]

Thanks DR and DM for the sound advice.

Just as a matter of interest has anyone used the Presonus Quantum yet and what do they think of it?

[digiot]

Originally Posted by Sting

Thanks DR and DM for the sound advice.

Just as a matter of interest has anyone used the Presonus Quantum yet and what do they think of it?

I would love some real world experiences with the Quantum too! On paper it blows any Thunderbolt interface out of the water when it comes to low latency.
I am sick and tired of hearing how great Apollo's are. They are only great if you use their plugins on there console application. Which is useless if you want to use tons of VI's! The only argument I hear from Apollo users is that their plug-ins are good. Which is true they make some of the best sounding emulations. The way I look at it is that if you buy a Quantum for low latency purposes and buy a UAD Octo Satellite you get the best of both worlds for less